Monday Night TV: Dancing With The Stars

As I noted yesterday, jilted Bachelor winner Melissa Rycroft, was added to the roster at Dancing With the Stars, which premieres tonight. She had all of two days to rehearse. I think she will be great, she's danced all her life and was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. I'm also glad she'll be a bigger star than Jason.

Lil' Kim is another I'm interested in watching.

Really smart move by ABC to add Melissa -- lots of people like me who aren't DWTS fans will be tuning in just to watch her and cheer her on.

me...trolling the web. I am definitely not a fan of that program. Oh but my wife on the other hand... We were out tonight at our favorite Chinese restaurant, enjoying our usual orange chicken, extra sweet. I was on my second Grey Goose on the rocks when I happened to mention something about tonight being the DWTS opener -- I assumed she had the DVR already scheduled. Crap, I don't remember what it was I said or why I even said it. Whatever I said, it was a mistake because she had overlooked the fact the show started tonight. Suffice to say, from that point on, our dinner was not the same. Shovel here, cram there, "hurry and drink that drink distracted, I think I left a candle burning" (OK, right, sure ya did).

Speaking of things that won't pay the bills, I was an art major in college - English minor - fat lot of good that did me! I ended up going back to school and getting a paralegal degree and have been doing estate and trust work for - gulp! - 30 years. Art is a hobby I do not get to engage in as often as I would like, but it comes through in other ways.

DWTS every year. Her partner Tony Dovaloni has always been one of my favorite professionals on the show. After that is Medium which I am also a longtime fan of.

Dont forget this week on the 12th All, or pretty much all of the stars from ER will return including George Clooney, Eriq LaSalle, Noah Wylie, etc, should be a great ending for this long running series.

I didn't think of Emmitt's win as completing a "trifecta." I wish my Hurricanes could muster up a monofecta. I'll take football. We usually do well in baseball and I suppose Warren Sapp can come back on DWTS (or maybe they can convince Ray Lewis) for our own trifecta.

and other assorted sports figures, I don't know if it would still have my attention. Emmitt was sure fun.

Melissa did do a good job. Normally I don't like it if the "stars" have too much of a dance background. I like watching them grow into it, but in this situation, it's a bit more flexible for me. Also think her partner was smart to take her training and build a dance around it. I'll follow for the season. I usually work through it along with AI and use my daylight hours for more productive things like taking the dog to the park, lol!~ And with baseball starting up soon . . .

My House is Worth What?" were great shows to watch before the housing bubble burst. You could almost see the bubble inflating with every show. My favorite was the one where the couple wanted to know how much equity they had so they could borrow against it for a really big destination wedding.

Young friends of my son delayed their big wedding to buy a condo a couple of years ago. Way overpriced, I could tell, even though this was not one of the cities that boomed beyond reason. But they wouldn't heed the wisdom of old folks who have watched markets for years.

They had their big wedding last year, borrowing again spending too much for it, too -- as they now see and say. Because then they decided to start a family, so they wanted a house. Found the one they wanted -- but then the market started tightening. They couldn't get a good mortgage or find a buyer for the condo. They're stuck with it, and with debt, and they can't afford to start a family. And they're barely 30.

At that age, we were sticking it out as renters for years, until we could come up with the 15 to 20% down payment for a place of our own. It was so hard to save that much, but at least we were saved from being foolish. So sad.

And I loved that the DWTS host and a judge made fun of Jason. You could really see Melissa's dance training in her performance, I thought she did really well.

I was trying to explain the whole thing to the TL kid who was here for dinner -- not knowing anything about the Bachelor finale, he wasn't getting why it was such big deal that she is on DWTS. Finally, I came up with, "It's like she went from Muni court to the 10th circuit in a week" -- as a newbie lawyer, it was like a light bulb went off and then he got into it.

with the "loser L" by the judge, lol!~ And Tony was smart the way he designed the dance around what she could do and then just 'waltz it up'. He did a nice job of showing off her strengths. If she has a quicker dance next week, she'll have her Cowboy background to help (and any other dance/audition training).

And for a change of pace, rerun of jack Hanna on Letterman with 2 baby Nubyian (sp?) goats. {sigh} :)

past 2 seasons. His fellow dancers say that's not the real "self", and so much of what's on screen is manipulated by the producers.

My daughter and her husband really wanted to try out for "The Amazing Race" but decided they didn't want to risk becoming the producer's choice for the couple to hate the most. Unfortunately, that seems to happen on all these "reality" shows.

where I think he personally crossed the line with his attitude. Nothing to do with scripting or what the producers wanted. Sure they can show them in whatever light they want, but he did this one all on his own. Heck, didn't they start out as the cute, loving siblings in a friendly rivalry? Some people are just a**es when it comes to the spotlight. I'd say with DWTS, you have less of the "love to hate" going on than the other shows. Live tapings and the format tend to keep it to a lower level. I didn't think anyone one the show was so obnoxious as to be the "love to hate" one, guess I just never saw it as that kind of show.

It was his season with Brooke and they won. My turning point was when the producers would play and replay and replay the unfortunate "confessional" scene with the partner who became his real life girlfriend. They pushed as hard as they could to get the fans to stop voting for them.

The producers get to manipulate through the practice footage and the confessional after the dance. And, they do. They will pounce on the first person to get frustrated and the woman who dares to cry. I've got a guess as to who they will be using this season for the drama.

Margaritaville suffered some smoke damage this morning when a fire broke out on Duval Street. There's no sensual ballroom dancing that takes place there, but there is plenty of romantic margarita drinking debauchery.